The present invention generally relates to automated travel planning systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for displaying a travel route between a departure point and a destination point, and an apparatus and method for generating a list of places of interest geographically located near a calculated travel route between a departure point and a destination point.
In past years, individuals planning trips by automobile, bicycle, or similar means have employed paper maps with manually-highlighted routes for assistance in traveling from a departure point to a destination point. For example, business such as travel agencies, car rental firms, automobile clubs, and travel clubs often provide individuals with booklets of maps covering the regions to be travelled by the individuals, and will manually highlight a travel route which may be taken by the individuals. A major drawback of manually-drawn routes on paper maps is that it is costly and inefficient in terms of time and money because an individual must first determine which route to take between a departure point and destination point, and must then piece together a set of paper maps which cover the region to be travelled. Furthermore, if an individual wants to know places of interest, such as hotels, restaurants, and attractions, along the route, he or she must go through the time-consuming process of determining which places of interest are geographically located near the route.
As technology has become more sophisticated, computerized mapping systems have developed for assisting individuals in travel planning. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,954,958 to Savage et al. discloses a directional information system for enabling a user to determine a desired geographical route between supplied locations. The system generates routing directions in a language, such as English, for output to a user via such output devices as a telephone receiver, printer, or display screen. A drawback of the Savage system is that it does not visually output the route on a displayed map or on a printer.
Other computerized mapping systems for generating a route between a departure point and a destination point have displayed the generated route on a vector map. Vector-mapping draws a map on a display screen on the fly by reading from a massive database of geographic information. The geographic information includes shape information, such as latitude and longitude coordinates, to properly draw the location of roads, highways, hydrology, cities, etc. One drawback of such a system is that it is slow because each map must be drawn on the fly. Another drawback is that it is difficult to place type on a displayed vector map on the fly without interfering with the roads, highways, hydrology, cities, etc. Yet another drawback of a vector map is that a vector map looks more like a xe2x80x9cstick mapxe2x80x9d than like a geographically accurate paper map.
Accordingly, a need exists for an automated travel planning apparatus for overcoming the above-noted drawbacks associated with existing travel planning systems.
In accordance with the foregoing, an object of the present invention is to provide an automated travel planning apparatus and method for displaying a bit-mapped image of a selected geographic region on a display screen and for generating and displaying a travel route between a selected departure point and a selected destination point at the correct position on the bit-mapped image. As discussed later, since the bit-mapped image is a xe2x80x9csnap-shotxe2x80x9d of a vector map counterpart, accessing and drawing the bit-mapped image on the display screen is almost instantaneous. Moreover, creation of the bit-mapped image entails steps which allow type to be easily placed on the bit-mapped image and which allow the bit-mapped image to be a geographically accurate representation of the coverage region.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an automated travel planning apparatus and method for generating a list of places of interest near a travel route between a departure point and a destination point.
In accordance with the present invention, the foregoing objects are realized by providing a method for displaying a travel route, the method comprising the steps of providing a bit-mapped image of a geographic region on a display monitor, providing a routing database having information indicating the geographic location of roads and places within the geographic region, selecting a departure point and a destination point geographically located within the geographic region, accessing the routing database to generate a travel route between the selected departure point and the selected destination point, and displaying the travel route on the bit-mapped image on the display monitor. In a preferred embodiment, the foregoing method further includes the step of generating and displaying a list of places of interest located near the generated travel route.